Chris Pratt and Jennifer Lawrence play star-crossed lovers in Passengers.Source:Supplied

CRITICS and viewers who’ve seen early screenings of Chris Pratt and Jennifer Lawrence’s big budget sci-fi vehicle Passengers have been left confused by a key storyline in the film that was left out of its trailer.

We’ll give you ample spoiler warning here — even though, truth be told, the information omitted from the trailer doesn’t really constitute a “plot twist” as it comes so early in the film.

Passengers tells the story of Jim Preston (Pratt) and Aurora Jones (Lawrence), two people who wake up from an induced hibernation 90 years too early on board a spaceship bound for a new planet.

If you’ve seen the trailer for Passengers, you may not know what you’re getting yourself in for.Source:Supplied

Hurtling through space with only each other for company, the pair have to face up to the reality that they will die of old age long before they reach their intended destination.

But here’s what the trailer doesn’t tell you: only Pratt’s character awakens early due to a malfunction in his hibernation pod. Flying solo through space, it takes Jim just a few months to decide on a course of action: He picks out a pretty, female, sleeping traveller and rifles through her personal information to find out more about her, obsessing over every detail and deciding he’s in love with her. He awakens her from her slumber to keep him company — thereby sentencing her to a death sentence on board the ship.

The pair’s playful sparring and inevitable romance takes on a rather more sinister tone when you consider that Aurora is falling for the man who literally decided on her behalf that she would die with him in space after fostering a months-long obsession with her while she was asleep.

‘Hey, sorry for sentencing you to a lonely life in a metal tube hurtling through space ... wanna make out?’Source:Supplied

Early reviews have focused on this major plot point, so noticeably absent from the film’s trailers.

The Telegraph says that the film “isn’t a romance: it’s a creepy ode to manipulation,” bemoaning Jim’s lack of accountability for his actions.

“I kept waiting for the twist ... the moment when the narrative’s ‘hero’ would be called to account for his actions. After all, he’d knowingly, deliberately condemned this woman, a fellow human being, to a horrifyingly lonely existence.

“Instead, there was a brief estrangement, before all was resolved after a big action set-piece finale. Effectively kidnapping somebody is fine, it turns out, because they’ll probably eventually come to love you anyway.”

The Guardian called Jim’s actions “gruesomely inescapable” in their review, noting that the film is so intent on forcing romance between the two leads that “it tidies up the unpleasantness and sweeps it under the carpet as quickly as possible.”

Jim, seen here looking for his moral compass.Source:Supplied

At The Verge, the reviewer notes the film tries to play out like a Titanic-esque love story. The difference, though, is that Passengers “features one decent character who is ripped from suspended animation (effectively dooming her to die of old age on a spaceship) by one terrible character who wants to have sex with her.”

CBR.com called the film “repulsive,” saying that “the moment he breaks Aurora from her hibernation, the film crosses a line it refuses to fully acknowledge, and so the romance is not fun.”

Celebitchy say that Aurora’s lack of consent is “the central problem of the film”: “Pratt’s character seems stalkerish, creepy, predatory,” they say.

Early viewers and those who were keen to see the film are also voicing their disappointment at the “creepy” plot:

I'm just learning how creepy the entire premise of Passengers is, and not the sweet romantic tale in space is promises and thinks it is.